Three Levels of Product Work
Impact, execution, and optics — align all three or fail at one
Shreyas Doshi identifies three distinct levels at which product work operates, and most PMs optimize for the wrong one. Level 1 is Impact — the actual outcomes and results of the work. What changes in the world because of what you built? Level 2 is Execution — the process of building and shipping. How well did you implement the solution? Level 3 is Optics — how the work appears to stakeholders. Does leadership understand what you accomplished and why it matters? Most PMs obsessively optimize for Level 2 (execution) because it feels most productive and most within their control. But the highest-performing PMs optimize primarily for Level 1 (impact) and understand that Level 3 (optics), while sometimes feeling political, is essential for organizational influence and resource allocation. The tension between these levels creates real conflicts. Teams that optimize purely for execution may ship features that have no meaningful impact. Teams that optimize for optics may appear successful while delivering nothing of value. The goal is alignment across all three levels: doing work that creates real impact, executing it well, and ensuring the organization understands and values what was accomplished.
- Most PMs optimize for execution because it feels productive, but impact is what actually matters.
- Optics is not politics — it is essential organizational communication about value created.
- A perfectly executed feature with no impact is a perfectly executed waste of resources.
- The highest-performing PMs move fluidly between all three levels based on context.
- Define Impact Before Starting ExecutionBefore any project begins, articulate clearly what impact looks like. Not what you will build (that is execution) or how you will present it (that is optics), but what will change in the world if this project succeeds. Write a one-paragraph impact statement that describes the measurable outcome you expect. If you cannot articulate the expected impact clearly, the project may not be worth executing, or you may need more strategic clarity before proceeding.Pro tipUse the format: 'If this project succeeds, [specific metric] will change from [current state] to [target state] by [date].'WarningDo not confuse output (we shipped a feature) with impact (customer retention increased by 5%). Shipping is execution; the result of shipping is impact.
- Execute with Impact as the CompassDuring execution, continuously check whether your implementation decisions serve the impact goal or just serve execution quality for its own sake. It is easy to over-engineer, over-design, or scope-creep when execution quality becomes the goal rather than the means. Every engineering decision, design choice, and scope trade-off should be evaluated against the question: does this increase our likelihood of achieving the stated impact? If not, it is execution theater.Pro tipHold a weekly 15-minute impact check with your team: 'Are we still on track to achieve the impact we defined? Has anything changed that shifts our approach?'
- Communicate Impact Through Strategic OpticsProactively communicate the impact of your work to stakeholders — do not assume they will notice or understand it on their own. This is not self-promotion; it is organizational intelligence. Leaders need to understand where value is being created to make good resource allocation decisions. If your high-impact work is invisible, resources may be redirected to lower-impact but more visible projects. Frame your communications around impact (what changed), not execution (what you built).Pro tipCreate a monthly one-page impact summary for leadership that shows the connection between what your team built and the business outcomes it produced.WarningOptics without genuine impact is manipulation. Only communicate impact that actually occurred — never exaggerate or fabricate results.
Shreyas describes PMs at Google who did exceptional Level 1 (impact) and Level 2 (execution) work but neglected Level 3 (optics). Their products created real value, but because they did not communicate that value effectively to leadership, their teams were deprioritized in favor of more visible but lower-impact projects. Meanwhile, PMs who were better at optics received more resources despite producing less actual impact.
Shreyas Doshi developed this framework across his PM career at Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and Stripe. At Google, he observed PMs who shipped flawlessly (Level 2 execution) but whose products had no measurable impact (Level 1). At Twitter, he saw brilliant product thinking (Level 1) undermined by poor organizational communication (Level 3). At Stripe, where he became the first PM manager, he began coaching PMs to think across all three levels simultaneously. The framework crystallized from the pattern he noticed: the PMs who advanced fastest and built the best products were not the best executors — they were the ones who understood which level to optimize at any given moment.